After Sasse’s exit, what’s next for UF? Likely a quiet — and costly — search

University of Florida board chairperson Mori Hosseini reassured those at a meeting this month that the school would stay the course following the sudden resignation of president Ben Sasse.

Hosseini said UF’s commitment to student safety would continue. The university earmarked $25 million to reward high performing professors. And it had raised more money for a new Jacksonville campus.

“We are moving full speed ahead to select a site and be on our way,” he said during the July 23 meeting that lasted all of 10 minutes.

Finding Sasse’s replacement will take much longer.

As former president Kent Fuchs prepares to step into the role of interim president, the university eyes a more distant horizon. It will search for a leader who can drive UF higher in college rankings, expand its presence around the state, and patch divisions between faculty, students and administration.

Yet the search for this leader comes at a tumultuous time for higher education in Florida, which a national faculty union president said has become “ground zero” for the conservative agenda.

So what’s next for the state’s flagship university? Here’s how things might unfold.

Presidential politics

One of the recent examples of how politics can cloud a presidential search was in 2021, when former education commissioner and House Speaker Richard Corcoran’s name emerged as a finalist for Florida State’s top job. FSU ultimately selected Richard McCullough, a former vice provost at Harvard University, but not before objections were made over Corcoran’s partisan background.

During the next session, legislators passed a bill that had been filed many times before. It exempted from public record the names of candidates for university president jobs until they were named finalists. The bill sponsor said this would allow high quality candidates to apply without fear of losing their current jobs.

Sasse was subsequently named president at UF after being named the sole finalist in the closed search the committee said yielded more than 700 applicants. The pick, which came 10 months after Fuchs, publicly announced his intent to step down, was met with protests over the transparency of the search.

At New College, Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six new conservative trustees to the board in January 2023. In their first meeting they ousted the president and appointed Corcoran, the education commissioner, as interim president. Corcoran was one of three finalists and emerged as president. That search, too, was criticized for its lack of transparency.

At Florida Atlantic, a search for its next president is far from textbook. The search was suspended last year after state officials raised procedural concerns when Republican state Rep. Randy Fine was not named a finalist. Fine, who took back his endorsement of DeSantis in favor of Trump while the two were running for president, once said DeSantis approached him about applying. The board chair has since resigned, after the state Board of Governors took a vote of no confidence in him due to the controversy surrounding the search.

If these examples promise anything, it’s that UF’s search for a new president will be a murky one.

Search costs add up

Judith Wilde, a researcher at George Mason University who studies presidential searches and contracts, said that in addition to growing more opaque, searches are getting more expensive.

UF, USF, FSU and the University of Central Florida all used the California-based search firm SP&A to conduct their recent searches.

At USF, the firm charged $160,000 plus other fees for a search in 2021 that yielded 18 applicants and Rhea Law, the interim president who ended up winning the full-time job. At FSU, the firm charged $90,000 plus fees. At UF, the company proposed a variety of fees, ranging from a third of Sasse’s first year of total base compensation of $1 million or an agreed upon flat fee proposal. The university did not disclose the total amount paid despite requests by the Tampa Bay Times. Although required by law to cite an exemption when they deny public information, UF officials have not given a reason, saying the requests were being “reviewed and processed.”

Beyond the search firm fees, universities often amend contracts of former presidents and continue to pay them after they leave. USF’s Steve Currall, who resigned in 2021, and New College’s Okker, who was ousted in 2023, both saw contracts amended and received their base salaries while on sabbatical.

The University of Florida has yet to respond to requests for any amended contracts for Sasse or Fuchs.

But Wilde pointed out in an op-ed that Sasse’s original contract did not specify a salary for when he transitions to a faculty role. His contract states that he would be appointed to faculty following his time as president unless he was fired with cause.

Wilde and her research partner have found that most contracts describe the salary for a president who steps down into a faculty role as receiving either 75% of their base pay, the highest pay of the faculty in the department they’re assigned to or highest at the university.

A call for transparency

While Sasse’s resignation for family and health reasons were understandable, Wilde said, a growing number of universities across the country are seeing presidents step down before their term is complete.

Recently, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania resigned amid pressure from donors and politicians after her testimony to Congress about antisemitism on campuses. Harvard University’s Claudine Gay resigned under similar pressure and after allegations of plagiarism. Texas A&M’s Kathy Banks retired last year amid a public controversy about the hiring of a journalism professor. Thomas Jefferson University’s Mark Tykocinski resigned after only a year as president after a scandal of “liking” social media posts that were critical of diversity, equity and inclusion; COVID vaccines; and gender-confirmation surgery.

Universities, Wilde said, could benefit from slowing down and involving more of their own communities in the search process to ensure the candidates are a good fit.

“It’s sort of a knee-jerk reaction of, ‘Oh my gosh, we don’t have a president now. We’ve got to get one to make sure that we can continue bringing in money and, you know, all that stuff,’” she said. “I think it’s important to take a look at what’s really happening on the campus and in the local community, more broadly.”

State Sen. Jeff Brandes, who introduced the bill to make searches more closed, previously said he hoped to see more than one finalist in future searches.

Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, called for greater transparency, including student, faculty and staff involvement.

“This should be an open, transparent process,” he said. “We don’t think Florida has done a good job with transparency. ... No one knows if Ron DeSantis put some candidates on a dartboard and threw a dart. "

At a recent news conference, DeSantis said he “was not somebody that was involved necessarily in their past selection,” and said he had faith in UF’s board to pick Sasse’s successor.

“The University of Florida’s board has really, really really high quality people, and I think they’ve done a fantastic job,” he said. “They’ll be really the ones that are going to be leading that effort.”

But DeSantis made clear what he hoped to see.

“We’re dedicated to academic rigor and high standards, and we’re dedicated to these institutions playing an important role in preparing our students to be citizens of this republic,” he said. “We do not want our higher institutions of higher education to turn into propaganda machines like Columbia University.”

Meera Sitharam, chairperson of the faculty union, said she’s not particularly hopeful for the next search.

While she said Fuchs may represent a slight improvement over Sasse, she didn’t feel confident faculty would be protected from state initiatives.

Wolfson, the national union president, said it will be important for the search committee to take into consideration candidates that understand the workings of a university.

“We need it not to be a political hack who knows nothing about higher education,” he said. “If you don’t understand it, you don’t value it.”